'It Sucks To Be Us Right Now': Kristaps Porzingis on His Struggling Mavs

Mavs Talk: Dallas ‘Can’t Make Shots’ says Luka Doncic after Friday’s 106-93 loss to Indiana Pacers

ESPN NBA announcer Jeff Van Gundy’s saying that the NBA is a “make-or-miss” league rang true on Friday when Dallas lost 106-93 to the Indiana Pacers.

Dallas went a lousy 4 for 29 from long range and star Luka Doncic was not happy.

“Right now, we’re just not making shots,'' he said. "We have a lot of open shots, we’re just not making them. I don’t know why.''

After being tied at 87, the Mavs got outscored 19-6 the rest of the way, going 1 of 10 from 3-point range.

Furthermore, Doncic tweaked his sore left ankle in the second half, yet he still managed to finish with 27 points, nine rebounds and nine assists. (But, the Mavericks now say Luka will miss his fifth game of the season Sunday at Oklahoma City.)

The rest of the Mavs didn’t provide much help, other than contributions from Kristaps Porzingis (22 points), Tim Hardaway Jr. (15 points) and Jalen Brunson (14 points).

After this loss, Dallas now is officially below .500 at 12-13.

Now let's hear the Mavs talk:

Doncic on what the Mavs should do going forward:

“We just got to maybe attack more, shoot less threes. I think we just got to think paint first, then shoot threes. I took a lot of bad threes. We should think rim first.”

Jason Kidd on not making the three-point shot:

“We can’t shoot straight from behind the 3-point line – it’s a broken record. We keep saying this for the last 25 games except for one game where we shoot 70 percent.”

Kidd on what the Mavs can do better:

“We have to be better. When we don’t make shots, we don’t get back. Tonight was a perfect case. So that’s just effort and communication and we didn’t do a good job of that tonight.”

Porzingis on the Mavs current state:

“It sucks right now to be us because we’re fighting, we’re playing hard and trying to do things right. But we still commit mistakes out there . . . and then on top of that we’re shooting catastrophic. It’s hard to win games like that.”

Porzingis looking ahead optimistically:

“We’ll get out of this. That is 100 percent fact. I think it’s only a matter of time until we find that offensive rhythm and start knocking those shots down and getting some more assists for Luka.”

On Sunday night, the Mavericks (12-13) will look to flip the script and return to .500 when they travel to play the struggling Oklahoma City Thunder (8-17). ... but they will do it without Luka ... and with the hope of not "sucking.''